It wasn’t just a ship. It was home.

Ari Badu captained her own small cargo fleet across the sector, but there were times when it seemed the ships flew her: Times like now when she had an order that needed to be delivered to her home planet, and no ship to do it but the Carry Bell. Faced with a deadline, she loads up and heads home, only to find that nothing there has changed. The miners still work hard for scraps from the rich man’s table. The wealthy still live off the profits of the mines, and Caden Carnes still has her heart.

Do they have a second chance?

Caden doesn’t need her. He needs her ship, and she needs to bring her brother’s mining crew home. Together, they set out on a rescue that will take them into dangerous territory and bring them far too close to each other. They’d been kids when they last saw each other, torn apart by familial obligations, class and greed, but, after all this time, they still had that spark.

Sparks cause explosions.

She’d built a world around a secret, made a family out of a lie. It had been necessary and cruel at the time, and she’d paid for it every second of the last seventeen years. She wasn’t finished paying, it seemed. She would have to come clean, fight old battles, and hunt down space pirates. Because the only thing she’d never yet said to Caden Carnes was no.